How to create a hit product on Xiaohongshu?

If you want to increase the traffic of your Xiaohongshu account, the most effective way is to write popular articles. So, how do you create popular content?

1. About the Hot Articles on Xiaohongshu

1. The rate of popular articles published on Xiaohongshu

The general requirement is a 10%-20% explosive article rate. (Additional information: amateurs with no creative ability should not be included in the explosive article rate range. For example, if 110 notes are posted, 100 of them are notes by amateurs with no creative ability, and 10 of them are notes by experts.

But they require a 20% viral rate, which means 22 articles must be viral. If brand owners or company management have such requirements for Xiaohongshu publishers, the publishers would probably be furious).

But what I want to emphasize here is the effective and ineffective hot articles. Ineffective hot articles may have good data, with tens of thousands of likes, collections and comments, but I have seen 400 comments and not a single one discussing brand and product related content.

This is an invalid hot article, and there is no call for bloggers to guide the comment section. After all, the comment section is the user’s second “home page”, and all the hot articles with weak content are fake hot articles.

On the contrary, I have seen notes with 500 interactions, and the comment section is also discussing this brand, but they are not called hot posts. This is a "hot article" with powerful content.

In addition, a blogger with 400,000 followers posted a review of a baby crawling mat, which received only over 2,000 interactions, and the comments section was full of discussions about the product and brand. With an investment of over 10,000 yuan, he generated over 190,000 yuan in product sales on Tmall.

2. Don’t over-pursue viral posts and unit engagement costs

There are patterns for popular articles, and big popular articles depend on factors such as luck and account number. There is still a certain pursuit for a viral article, but don’t put too much emphasis on the data. The above fake viral articles are examples.

Interaction cost, personal bias, this is a ridiculous measurement standard. One is the measurement period. If calculated on a monthly basis, if there is still an increase in interaction data in the notes in the third month, then should the interaction cost be adjusted down again?

Someone else asked: How many interactions will it take for someone to go to Tmall for a search?

The logic of content marketing is not like this. Some users may feel the desire to buy after seeing a note, but instead of clicking “like” or “collect”, they go directly to Tmall to search and place an order.

E-commerce thinking is different from content marketing thinking. It also depends on the type of note. Some useful posts may attract collections but may not necessarily lead to purchases.

Interaction costs can only be used as a reference and cannot be included in KPI assessment.

3. Evaluation and calculation of viral rate

The standard definition of a hot article is 1,000 interactions (likes, favorites, and comments). If the blogger has 200,000 followers, then 1,000 interactions is obviously not a high requirement. But over time, many standards change.

For example, a note about mother and baby products with 500 interactions can be called a hot article, because it has been difficult for the mother and baby sector to produce hot articles recently. One is the relationship with the platform, and the other is the serious homogeneity of the content of maternal and child notes. In the future, perhaps forwarding will also be included in the definition of a viral article.

4. Create a hot post with natural traffic

Natural traffic from content can indeed create popular articles, but it depends on the advertising level of the content. If the notes of amateurs and junior experts receive 50-300 interactions within one day after being published, then you can invest in French fries to help.

As for whether to stop the natural traffic first and then cook the French fries, or to cook the French fries before the natural traffic stops, there are different opinions. You will know after testing according to your own product type and note type.

How many popular articles are needed to create a hit product? According to the above logic, there is no standard here. You will know if you look carefully at the above content. Unless you tell me the brand name of this “young” hit product (0-2 years), I will help you break it down. Different fields have different standards. To be honest, I have never summarized it. If I know something, I say I know it. If I don’t understand something, I say I don’t understand it.

2. Build IP through Enterprise Accounts

It depends on the company’s choice and stage. If the boss has strong IP attributes, then consider starting with the boss first. It is easy to highlight the effect. Afterwards, the boss's IP was transitioned to a branded animated virtual character.

If it is a brand IP, I don’t know how you understand brand IP. If "Jiang Xiaobai" is understood as a brand IP, then the prototype of Jiang Xiaobai is the combination of Mr. Tao and Mr. Ye. It also depends on the industry and product, and IP creation plans and implementation are formulated based on different industries.

Without knowing the background, I won't draw any conclusions.

3. Xiaohongshu’s current advertising proportion and its relationship with Douyin

For those of you who don’t know the background of this issue, generally speaking, the ratio of images to videos is 4:1 when they are delivered. We will adjust the ratio based on data feedback. When users are browsing, it takes only 10 seconds to understand the content of a graphic note, while a video may take a minute.

So what I want to say is that the official strongly recommends video notes and wants to change users' browsing habits. However, some of Xiaohongshu's users still prefer pictures and texts in their browsing habits.

The platform wants to change user habits, but users currently retain browsing habits. I haven't done any specific research, so it's hard to draw a conclusion. I'm speaking based on observation and daily communication with users.

But video is the trend.

What impact does Douyin have on Xiaohongshu? Although both are grass-planting platforms, Douyin’s closed loop is better. In terms of content exposure cycle, Xiaohongshu is better because its search and personalized recommendation segmentation are more comprehensive. From the perspective of the brand, it is necessary to look at the brand's target audience, and after comparison and testing, choose which side to invest more.

4. Choose the right first picture and title to make your notes more popular

What type of notes should we look at for this question? If it is about beauty and eye shadow, then we can take a look at Perfect Diary, which has many tutorials. The first picture is 3:4, 30% of the upper picture is the facial part, and the lower picture is the overall picture for left and right comparison. This will be more eye-catching. For example, imitating XX celebrity’s makeup, comparing before and after makeup, and comparing left and right pictures.

If you are placing information flow ads, I can provide official guidance documents, which will be more detailed. After all, there is a difference between the first picture of the information flow and the first picture of the daily hot article notes.

5. Choose the right influencers for Xiaohongshu placement

How to choose the right expert? Today’s sharing has shared that the dimensions of selecting experts are different from daily operations. The pitfalls of working with influencer agencies are the control over content marketing, the discussion of ROI, and knowing exactly what kind of content our brand wants. The size of the organization is also acceptable, it mainly depends on the level of the person in charge of the project.

How to drive e-commerce conversions on platforms such as Taobao and Tmall during the promotion of Xiaohongshu influencers? This is a big question. If there is a chance, we can communicate one-on-one.

6. Do a good job of drainage

If you just want to attract traffic to sell goods in your private domain, then there is no need to mention planting grass too much, just directly post content to attract traffic. Even if you are a business that mainly operates in the private domain, you should remember to open a Taobao store. There are still some "slippery fish" that go to Taobao to search for brands. Weibo and Baidu must also do a good job of optimizing keywords to receive traffic.

1. Drainage path

First, content creation - the account signature and the moment to guide, the hidden WeChat number can be inserted in the moment

Second, only follow one account. This account is a small account. The notes of the small account have a hidden WeChat number.

Third, including keyword guidance when sending private messages, what you may need more is the following.

2. Xiaohongshu’s content strategy: matrix approach

(1) SOP process for hot content

Analyze the core behind a popular article instead of simply imitating it. The purpose of analyzing the reason behind a popular article is not just to imitate the form. The next step is to think about the problems of the crowd and what problems have not been solved. Once the person in charge is able to develop the content production process, talents can be replicated quickly.

Every time a festival/season comes, we take a look at what the hot articles were at this time last year. Every year is a cycle.

Innovation is the reorganization of old elements.

(2) Account Production SOP Process

You just need to understand this part, I won’t go into details. This account must be a normal user, and it must have been registered for quite some time. The content must be very real, just like the life in a person’s circle of friends. They even use accounts that already have a large number of followers to create content.

(3) Talent replication SOP process

When recruiting full-time or part-time copywriters, we don’t want people who are immersed in writing copy for Taobao detail pages because their thinking is rigid and they cannot break out of it. The brand/product targets the same age group and recruits talents of the same age. Because the people recruited are already one of the target audiences of the product (of course, this is not absolute, it depends on the specific situation).

In the first week, collect popular articles for targeted groups of people. After reading them, write 10 notes and analyze the reasons for the popular articles. In the second week, note the quality of the data, summarize the reasons behind it and the next step of optimization. In the third week, unify the training on note content creation/factors of popular articles, review and brainstorm. In the fourth week, customize the reward plan (popular articles are divided into small, medium and large levels, and the rewards range from dozens to 300).

You can feel whether a person is capable of doing it in 2 to 4 weeks. The standard configuration of a team is about 2 core leaders who can carry the banner, and it is also OK to bring a group of fresh graduates and interns. It is normal for each person to have 5-15 accounts, one device, one card and one number, and no WIFI connection. This requires determination, and it requires high content creation. Test on a small scale, and then expand if it works.

(4) Risk Control Team SOP Process

The job of the risk control team is to test the feasibility of the content, and generally 1-3 people are enough. Be prepared to pay for scrapping content and accounts. The risk control team then brainstormed in depth with the content production team to develop a set of currently feasible plans, currently popular headlines, and predict the popular content of the next related festivals and seasons.

Since Xiaohongshu’s rules are adjusted relatively quickly, the risk control team needs to play a protective role and have a clear understanding of Xiaohongshu’s rules.

VII. Final Summary

First, there must be powerful content behind a hit article, otherwise it is an invalid hit article. The interaction cost is only a reference and cannot be used as the focus of KPI assessment. These are superficial, and the core is still the content and target audience.

Second, the creation of the boss’ IP depends on the strength of its own IP attributes. If it is not strong, consider using brand IP for promotion. Or transition from the boss’s personal IP to a cartoonized brand IP, such as Jiang Xiaobai’s prototype and cartoonized brand IP.

Third, in terms of content quality, there will be an audience regardless of the difference between pictures and videos. It’s just that Xiaohongshu officials are vigorously promoting video notes. Video is the trend, and all users still prefer picture and text notes. The recommended ratio of pictures, text and videos is 4:1 or 3:2.

Fourth, each category has an eye-catching first picture template. By collecting a large number of hot article notes and analyzing them, we can summarize N kinds of first picture templates (you can refer to my previous article on hot article analysis for details).

Fifth, cooperation with influencer agencies mainly depends on whether they have a deep understanding of the brand’s purpose, how to see the ROI, and crowd analysis. Regardless of the size of the agency, the core still depends on the project leader’s control over content marketing.

Sixth, the private domain of Xiaohongshu is currently strictly regulated. In addition to the secret codes that Xiaohongshu directly uses to divert traffic (there are really many ways), it is better to have other platforms lay the groundwork for receiving traffic, such as keyword laying the groundwork on Baidu/Taobao/Weibo.

Author: Zhuang Jun

Source: Zhuang Jun Xiaohongshu Marketing